My lovely apartment and my friends stayed in Würzburg. I spent my last days in the city saying goodbye to the city and the people and just having plain fun. It has been another hard goodbye, leaving the city when I felt most comfortable. I will always remember the places, the smiles, the people, the jokes and the amazing good times I had there.

The next time I will be in the country I will be just a tourist. This is a weird feeling for me because I really think of Würzburg as my home. Thanks everybody for making it possible.

The trip to Cologne was my first hitchhiking experience ever. My host was Barbara, a German girl able to mix flawlessly Spanish and South American slang. She speaks better Spanish than me!. In Cologne I visited the cathedral. It’s massive, it looks big from outside and it’s huge once you are inside. The cathedral was full of tourists so it was not such an amazing experience. I miss the Hindu temples in India were only locals are on the temple instead of tourists taking pictures!

In the top of the biggest cathedral in Germany (Ulm cathedral was taller!)

With Barbara, my CS host in Köln and Cataldo, the espontaneous surfer

My hitchhiking sign to Frankfurt (The original idea was Frankfurt-Strasbourg but I did Frankfurt-Köln)

Köln massive cathedral

More interesting than the overhyped cathedral was the Chocolate Museum. It has a tropical section with real cocoa trees and a very nice exposition about how cocoa was used in America as food and currency before the Spanish arrived and how cocoa is nowadays cultivated in tropical areas all over the world. The best part of the museum is the small factory where they make their own chocolate bars and chocolate candy!

Munich

I went to Munich for a visit to the Spanish consulate. I hitchhiked to Munich on a bus full of Tamil people that went to Munich for a demonstration to raise awareness about the Sri Lankan war. How random is that? I must have a strange connection with that country. It was fun to say “hello” “my name is david” and “thank you” in Tamil, this people were not used to europeans speaking their language and it was very interesting to see their reactions.

Frankfurt

I went to Frankfurt to play a scavenger hunt game on the city. It was a lot of fun because the task list forced us to move around downtown with concrete objetives: Locate the naked man, make a human chain from this statue to the other… It was nice to walk around downtown Frankfurt paying attention to the street and the people. I really want to organize a similar game in Würzburg!

In comparison I’m in such stage on life I don’t have any consistent objetive in my life. My beliefs and goals change faster than my environment. I’m curious about everything, there are tons of interesting skills to have or topics to learn about.

Is this a problem?

It’s really easy to influence me to change my beliefs and life goals. When I read something that seems logical I accept what is written for granted without further thinking. The consequence: what I think about a topic today can be totally different tomorrow.

My mind is extremely open minded and lazy. It’s easier to accept what others think than work to have a personal opinion. Not only I have very bad memory but sometimes I have extremely simple thoughts. Most of the time my thoughts are similar to Homer Simpson’s than Goethe’s.

In consequence I don’t have strong personal opinions about anything. I’m a son of Internet, suffering an information overload, reading too much and not spending enough time to ask myself what is my real opinion about what I’m reading.

Do you have the same problem?

First of all I needed a place to go. My objective was to reach Salzburg in France, around 300km away from Würzburg. Hitchhiking in 2009  it’s a lot easier than 20 years ago because the technology make it easy for everybody. There are lots of pages on the Internet describing tips and tricks, what to do to get lifts, how to dress and the correct spots in each city to get lifts. I spend a couple of days researching all of this documentation. I also researched the best hitchhike route which meant going to Strasbourg via Stuttgart. I even prepared at home the sign I was going to use. Here it is.

Amateur hitchhiker sign

So I went to the best spot in Würzburg, the big gas station on the A3 highway. Once there I asked a couple what was the correct direction to go to Stuttgart. I was in the incorrect side so I needed to cross the highway.  20 minutes later I reached the correct big gas station. It looked perfect, with a huge rest area with lots people and a constant flow of cars entering the station.

So I started asking the people with a big smile in my face. The people smile me back happily but all of them rejected me. It was a huge failure. No one seemed to go to Stuttgart, all the people in the station was heading to Frankfurt. Once I finished asking all the people in the rest area one guy told me he was coming from Stuttgatt so I should be asking the people on the other side of the highway.

That was the reason! I went back to the gas station at the other side of the highway and I started asking the people with renovated energies. The reaction was the same, all the people was smiling me back but all of them were going to Munich. After some minutes a girl came to me and told me she was coming from Stuttgart so I should be on the other side of the highway.

I was screwed. There was not consensus! People were coming from Stuttgart from both directions!

It was a bad spot to get a ride to Stuttgart. I decided to change the plan. In the first station everybody seemed to go to Frankfurt so I decided to go to Frankfurt instead of Stuttgart and then figure out how to go to Strasbourg from Frankfurt. I went back to the first gas station and I prepared a new sign.

Semi-pro hitchhiker sign

There are important improvements over the first sign. It was difficult for the people to read the coloured bubble letters even at 2 meters of distance so I decided to draw clear black lines in this new version.

I was convinced that finding a ride to Frankfurt was going to be easy as cake this time. I started asking the people on the station, with a huge smile in my face. Most of the people give me back a smile but all of them rejected me. Some of them told me “Frankfurt? No, I’m heading to Stuttgart” so I answered “Stuttgart is fine also” while showing the original sign. This people were screw. This is a tip, if you don’t want to take a hitchhiker don’t say you are going to other place because the hitchhiker CAN also want to go there and you will feel really stupid telling him “NO” anyway.

After 20 minutes asking people I decided to change my strategy.  I decided to be more emotional on the banner. I looked like a perfect hitchhiker and I was convinced I only needed to let the people feel sorry for me. The best way I could think was to let them think I was travelling in Europe and my home was far, far away. I drew a new sign.

Hitchhiker sign

Don’t ask my why did I draw the flower, maybe to give the impression I am a peaceful guy and I was not going to slaughter anybody. I turned around and I start people again.  The third guy I asked gave me a lift. It took 15 seconds.

I founded the key. I was a hitchhiker!

The guy was actually heading to Belgium so I told him to drop me in Cologne instead of Frankfurt . I love it, I was changing the plans on the fly. I was not going to Strasbourg after all, my destiny was guiding me to Cologne. Once we got close to Cologne the guy drop me in a Gas Station. This was a novice error. Yes, I was in Cologne, but very far from downtown. No problem, we are in 2009 and I had technology support. I used Google Mapson my cell to locate a train station at walking distance. 20 minutes later I was in Cologne, in front of the biggest German cathedral. Wohoooo!

Stolen bike

And then I started blaming everybody in Spanish and English. I am really, really surprised that people steal bikes in this country!

One of the cities I recently visited is Bayreuth. This is a small, romantic city very well known because the important classical musical festival that is held on the city every year. All German cities look the same but each one has different peculiarities. Bayreuth is centered in the person of Wagner and I visited the Wagner house (where he is buried) and the Wagner opera house.

Walking aliens on Bayreuth

I went to Darmstadt to do my TOEFL examination. I’ve been in Darmstadt several times visiting my friend Clerigo and I know the city. After doing the exam, I went to Heildelberg for a Couchsurfing free hugs day event. It was a lot of fun and I met a lot of interesting people.

I used for the first time the VRN ticket to return to Würzburg. This is a very cheap ticket that only allows you to take the slow S-bahn between cities in the country side. This has been my most beautiful train trip in Germany so far. The local train between Heildelberg and Ostenburken follows a river trough a small valley with tiny beautiful towns. This area is not on the travel guides because there is nothing specially really worth of visiting but the entire region is relaxing and plain beautiful.

Dinosaur in Bayreuth

All of those places had in common one thing. I was living with other people. My apartment in Würzburg is my first place of my own.

Apartment in Würzburg

Now I have mats on the floors instead of massive amounts of dust. I have boxes filled with stuff instead of big piles of stuff. I have clear walls instead of circuit boards hanging from the wall. And I have stuff that has no other reason to be there than look nice.

It’s not a secret that I have no style. I’m a square headed male engineer and I have a pure analytical mind. I appreciate functionality over style. When I tried to decorate something the result is always a mess. I really like how the pictures look on decoration magazines, but I was not able to create nice spaces combining shapes and colors by my own.

This time I had the opportunity to take over Janette’s apartment. She worked for a decoration company on the last years and according to her, this place is her personal masterpiece. It really looks clean and nice. Zen. After taking out all her pink stuff , her princess palace become my apartment.

Paella!

What was interesting was my reaction to be exposed again to the language. I was completely used to live in countries where I didn’t understand the language. In this time I discovered I really like to be able to completely disconnect from what surrounds me when I’m in public spaces.

In contrast, in Spain my brain was constantly working, catching conversations I should not pay attention to. I got tired of understand everything. I was in the streets sneaking into other people conversations. I shared complete conversations on buses and trains. I got completely frustrated. I could’t switch off my brain and It was exhausting.

Another interesting thing was realizing that doesn’t matter what you do, the world change but only if you want to accept the changes. I changed a lot in this last year. I’ve been traveling and I had the opportunity to become influenced. I become a lot more open minded sharing pieces of my life with interesting, silly and funny people from all around the world. I’ve living immerse in a completely different culture and I’ve questioned lots of things that I usually gave for granted. All in all I realize we are small persons in a big world and each one of us have different dreams. Each one pursue they dreams in a different way and all of them are valid because there is always a reason behind. Looking back to how I was one year ago, I can easily see that I changed a lot. However all my friends continue being the same way. Of course this is not bad but I didn’t realize how much I really have change until I returned to my hometown.

In conclusion, I really like to be living in a place where I don’t really belong. Yes, you lose contact with your family and friends but It make you more conscious. It’s easier to question why the things are like they are. You become more critical about what it is around you. And I feel more positive and comfortable with myself.

Würzburg from the fortress

The first thing I notice once I arrived here was the COLD. I was used to hot and humid nights and the fresh COLD air was a surprise to me. I was freezing but the people was just wearing light clothes!. Another big difference I notice instantly, it was absolutely dark around 20:00!

After a couple of days visiting the city, I’m really surprised because I was expecting a small and boring city but this is a very beautiful and romantic city. It’s also very green, there are lots of trees and vegetation everywhere and most of the people appear to use bikes, and there are no cars in downtown. The buildings are short and the streets are narrow and clean. Everything looks… nice, which is a good contrast with Seoul. I was tired of the crappy saturated Korean streets.

Postcard-like picture of the city

The city is surrounded by hills. The main one has a huge castle. From there, you can see the entire city.I really like this mini city. It’s extremely romantic and cute,you can walk all over the city, there is no traffic and the air is incredible clear.

Jumping on Würzburg Residence (UNESCO)

I was checking 44Kg. Overweight fees were 700 EUR.

It was the first time I had that problem so at the beginning I was quite confused. After some minutes, I ran to the freighter company and shipped my backpack directly to Würzburg. I needed to take off lots of weight, throwing to the gargaje lots of old clothes and crappy shirts I bought in Korea and Taiwan. And my running shoes!

I paid 150Won for shipping the backpack (more or less 70EUR) and the hole process took 1 hour and a half. Thanks god I went early to the airport. Shipping was ten times cheaper than Lufthansa. Next time I will not need to decide anything!